CHAPTER XII AMERICAN COMPETITION WITH GREAT BRITAIN IN THE CHINA TRADE The California clippers, after discharging their cargoes at San Francisco, either returned in ballast round Cape Horn, or continued their voyages across the Pacific and loaded cargoes at Asiatic ports for the United States or Great Britain. Some of the ships which sailed to China from San Francisco, raced across the Pacific in ballast, touching at the Sandwich Islands only long enough to back the main yard off Diamond Head and send the mails ashore with perhaps a missionary or two. In those days the Kanaka maidens used to swim off alongside the ships, and they were probably the nearest approach to mermaids that has ever been known in real life. The _Stag-Hound_ made the passage from San Francisco to Honolulu in 9, and the _Flying Cloud_ and _Surprise_ in 12 days each. The _Flying Cloud_ sailed 374 miles in twenty-four hours, the day after leaving San Francisco, with a fresh whole-sail breeze and smooth sea, under sky-sails and royal studdingsails. The _Southern Cross_ made the passage from San Francisco to Hong-kong in 32, and the _Game-Cock_ in 35 days, the run of the _Game-Cock_ from Honolulu to Hong-kong in 19 days being most remarkable. When these and other fast American vessels loaded again in China for English ports, they, of course, added to the competition from which British ships were already suffering. We have seen how the _Oriental_ brought a cargo of tea from China to England in 1850, and what interest her appearance excited in London. She was soon followed by the _Surprise_, _White Squall_, _Sea Serpent_, _Nightingale_, _Argonaut_, _Challenge_, and other clipper ships built for the California trade. These American clippers received from £6 to £6, 10s freight per ton of forty cubic feet, with immediate despatch, while British ships were loading slowly at £3, 10s per ton of fifty cubic feet. The American ships made fine passages and delivered their teas in excellent condition; but what especially appealed to the Briton was the fact that they had cleared more than their original cost and running expenses on this, their first voyage. An able English writer,[7] referring to the American clippers engaged in the China tea-trade at this period, remarks: “This new competition proved for a time most disastrous to English shipping, which was soon driven out of favor by the lofty spars, smart, rakish-looking hulls, and famed speed of the American ships, and caused the tea-trade of the London markets to pass almost out of the hands of the English ship-owner. British vessels well manned and well found are known to have lain in the harbor of Foo-chow for weeks together, waiting for a cargo, and seeing American clippers coming in, loading, and sailing immediately with full cargoes, at a higher freight than they could command.